Walter Cassel's Metropolitan Opera debut was in 1942 as de Bretigny
in Manon (BEFORE his debut with the New York City Opera, which
came in 1948.) He stayed at the Met until 1945. And though he returned
there once again in 1955, and sang there until 1974 (he sang 275 performances
at the Met and only 126 at the NYCO), Walter Cassel's name will forever
be associated with the "other" opera company, and then most
especially for his signature portrayal of Baby Doe Tabor's garrulous
husband Horace.

Yet, despite his versatility in French,
German and Italian repertoire, his notoriety for having performed opposite
the great Maria Callas without any wounds to show for it, and prodigious
feats like performing Scarpia, Kurwenal and Jochanaan all within the
space of twenty-four hours, Walter Cassel remains relatively unknown,
even among opera devotees. Indeed, almost his only extant recording
is the definitive Baby Doe, with Beverly Sills and Frances
Bible, done in a single take during the opera's New
York run in 1958.

Cassel grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa,
taking trumpet lessons and singing in his high school chorus. He intended
to go into dentistry while attending Creighton University in Omaha,
but changed his mind after an encounter with legendary baritone Lawrence
Tibbett, a personality whose influence stayed with Cassel the rest of
his life. Following Tibbett's advice to go to New York to pursue a professional
singing career, he arranged with a helpful freight agent to accompany
a carload of cattle "on-the-hoof" to a yard in New Jersey,
just across the Hudson from Manhattan. It was December of 1933. He spent
an entire week in a cold caboose. But on his first day in New York Cassel
got a scalper's ticket to hear Tibbett in Aïda. Two days
later he had a regular gig on an NBC radio show.

Cassel (who remembered, in retrospect,
reading in 1935 about the death of the real Baby Doe Tabor) created
the role of Horace Tabor in the world premiere night of The Ballad
of Baby Doe at Central City, Colorado, July 7, 1956. (Dolores Wilson
was Baby, and Martha Lipton was Augusta.) Though that performance is
lost to history, some of the performances from that original season
survive due to Cassel's own ingenuity. He had the presence of mind not
only to hook his tape recorder up to the opera house stage's public
address system (the means by which singers could hear the progress of
the performance while still in their dressing rooms), but to give copies
to the principals, after the fact, for their archives. As a result,
at least two virtually complete recordings of those original casts,
which include such other wonderful singers as Leyna Gabriele, Norman
Treigle and Clifford Harvuot, are preserved in private collections to
this day.

Not unlike the man he chose to play
so often, Walter Cassel's robustly-etched portrayal of Colorado's richest
miner will loom formidably over every performance by every baritone
who attempts to follow in his shoes. During the thirty-five years following
the opera's premiere, he sang the Horace Tabor role hundreds of times:
discovering a deeper connection with it in every performance. Or rather,
spurred on by the powerful influence of the great Hanya Holm (Baby
Doe's original stage director), Cassel became Horace Tabor hundreds
of times thereafter. "It felt like we were turning into the people
we were supposed to be playing," Cassel later recalled of her meticulous
and rigorous direction. An audience could hardly ask for more from an
artist. And as a permanent legacy, both Walter AND Horace should be
"mighty" proud.

In
April 1994, D. Kanzeg visited Bloomington, Indiana and spoke with
Walter Cassel in his home. They talked about creating the role
of Horace Tabor, the Baby Doe premiere in Central City, and the
recording with Beverly Sills.

WC: After we did Baby Doe
in Central City, some of the New York critics came out for that. But
they didn't think it was very great. I think their observations were
rather shallow. Because, on hearing it and rehearing it, about the third
year, or something like that, they began to change their opinions. It
depends on how you lis…there's a way to listen and a way not to
listen…as well as sing. And they began to change their opinions
and see that there was some real depth in Horace Tabor, Baby Doe and
the whole Tabor family. But if you can't….it's like having education.
You can't do something that requires education if you don't have education.
I think it's as simple as that. If your observation is not deep enough
how can you observe deeply. It's just as simple as that.

DK: Let's talk about Baby Doe
and the premiere in Central City. How far ahead of that performance…I
think it was July 7th, 1956…how far ahead did you become acquainted
with the story, or what led up to that?

WC: Doug Moore didn't warn me very
much. All of a sudden Columbia--my manager Kurt Weinhold--said that
a composer from the university wants to talk with you about possibly
being interested in an opera called The Ballad of Baby Doe.
So I went up to Doug's apartment. He played through some of it….I
don't know if you've ever heard Doug play the piano…[laughter]

DK: ….yes, in bawdy songs….

WC: I must admit I couldn't tell what he was playing. You see he plays
almost like sketchiness looks like when you sketch…you know how
some composer's sketch…I could not tell. And I took the score
home. And had Stewart Willy, he was playing for me at that time, who
had been Tibbett's accompanyist. And we went over it and just began
to fall flatly in love with it. And results was that we wanted to be
a part of it. So Doug Moore was happy about that…he got another
step along the way. But I went to Central City where we did it and we
were so carried away with the opera….I don't remember…I'm
not that great a musician…although having been a trumpeter was
a great help…but it kind of sang itself….the Horace Tabor
part…it was so naturally written….there was a little rewriting
that went on after we left Central City, but before we played it in
New York City. But basically it was there. And it…even the critics
could not see this, as I mentioned before. They didn't see beyond their
noses. That's the way it seemed to me. If I were going to describe it.
They heard things they didn't know were there…that seems hard
for an experienced critic and I don't think they would have admitted
it either, but... Anyway. it seemed to be the truth…the more they
heard Baby Doe, well [the more] us who played it [heard Baby
Doe]…I think all of us would agree on that point. It gets
into your skin and you become…. because it's real. Part of it
is really real. You can't escape it…

WC: I was in New York and then went
back to Omaha to give this outdoor concert. And I was the big homegrown
boy going back to sing. They had a big concert. I sang with a band.
But going back to New York on the train I picked up a newspaper and
read about the death of Baby Doe, freezing to death. I thought that
was unusual…I didn't know anything about Baby Doe then. But I
remembered. I turned the pages back when Baby Doe's name appeared in
my mind, and remembered that I read about her. Now why should I do that?
History has strange ways of connecting itself. But there I was reading
about Baby Doe and I didn't have any idea that I was…uh..would
become the Horace Tabor in an opera. But until later, when I was doing
the Tabor tour, I remembered that. Can you imagine!?

WC: [talking about Hanya Holm, the
Baby Doe stage director at Central City] Hanya Holm! Who was
just superb! She knew how to draw every ounce of blood out of us…and
the blood that belonged to the opera. And…well,…it felt
like we were turning into the people we were supposed to be playing.
I think that's quite a compliment, because they were interesting, red-blooded
Americans, growing up the tough way. And making a go of it. Living life,
and enjoying it. This is what, in a sense, I think this is what the
early stages of singers go through, to try and survive, to be alive,
to stay singing, and stay healthy. And grow. This life is too short
on this planet not to live that fully.

DK: So what happened that night, after
the [premiere] performance?

WC: Well, some few of 'em got a little
drunk, I think. But I don't drink that much. But you naturally stay
up talking about how good or how bad this was. But we were all excited
with Baby Doe. And to say the least, Doug Moore and Latouche…he
had a good habit of drinking…so he was kind of full of gin or
something, but Doug Moore is a more simple person. And I'm sure Doug
wept, like he did every time he came backstage…and told me what
he thought of the opera. Or what we did with it. He was a sweetheart.
Sweet old man.

DK: How 'bout the recording? That's
a different story too.

WC: Well, that recording! We were all
a little bit shocked. Because we had it in shape; we were performing
it at New York City opera. And so they…it's like as if they decided
'well, they're going to make a recording'. So we went to the recording
studio on Broadway up there in an old theater and uh….played it
in the theatre…just went through it. Once. That's not the way
they do most recordings.

DK: So that was like a LIVE recording?

WC: Yes. Yes. We went through…I
don't think we repeated a single thing. But it was like doing a performance
except that we didn't' go through all the throws. We sang into microphones,
you know.

DK: That's astounding. Because, to
me, that has become, in a way, the sort of definitive performance.

WC: Well, I think it was only definitive
for the simple reason that we were up in it and performing it on stage
at New York City Opera. We did the same thing in that stand-still effort
that we did onstage, because we were induced and practiced to do it.
Because it wasn't like a stand-up-in-front-of-a-microphone performance
at all. You just…you were playing the parts.

To hear the audio of this interview,
click the speaker.

To see Cassel star as
Sergeant Shane Rollins
in Romance Road, click the test pattern.

Click here for the link to Romance Road at the Internet Movie database.